New Study Highlights Changing Internet Usage

This represents an increase of 14% year on year and makes Asia Pacific the largest of the five worldwide regions.

Latin America and Middle East-Africa have also experienced above average audience growth during the past year, while North America and Europe have grown at more modest rates.

A recent report from eMarketer forecast that 42.8 million Britons will go online in 2012, accounting for about 70% of the population (see 70% Of UK Will Go Online In 2012).

In separate research, eMarketer forecast that UK online ad spending will pass £3 billion in 2008, and show healthy growth despite financial and political uncertainty in Britain (see UK Online Adspend To Pass £3bn In 2008).

The US now accounts for 21% of internet users worldwide, said comScore. While growth in the number of internet users in the US has slowed, several Asian and Eastern European countries continue to add new users at a rapid rate.

Google is the dominant search brand in most countries, including most of Europe and Latin America, with a few significant exceptions – countries where Chinese, Korean, and Russian languages dominate.

Chinese language search engine Baidu currently ranks third in worldwide search market share, behind Google and Yahoo!.

The number of worldwide visitors to social networking sites has grown 34% in the past year to 530 million, representing approximately two out of every three internet users. MySpace and Facebook are in a tight battle for the global leadership position, each attracting more than 100 million visitors per month, said comScore.

Online video has become the dominant online entertainment format, led by the global popularity of YouTube with more than 250 million visitors in January.

The internet has also become an important source of news for most web users. The top 10 global news brands show great diversity between country of origin, including the US, UK, China and South Korea.